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About 500 plush dogs and cats are spread out with help from Lackawanna County Sheriff’s Department Cpl. Corey Cavalieri on Thursday at the Aaron Center in Dickson City, with more stuffed animals to be donated in the next few weeks.
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On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Joseph P. McDonald manned the switchboard at Fort Shafter in Hawaii when he received the alarming message that radar had detected a large number of planes approaching from the north, heading fast for Oahu.
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Scranton will demolish an obsolete apartment building at the city’s first public housing development, Valley View Terrace.

The city and Scranton Housing Authority plan to use $500,000 in federal Housing and Urban Development funds to raze a three-story building at the complex in the 1900 block of Stafford Avenue in South Scranton.

Opened in late 1951, Valley View Terrace has a total of 240 dwelling units, including 16 two-story buildings containing 144 town-home-type apartments and four three-story structures each containing 24 apartments.

The building to be torn down is among that latter group and needs extensive repairs. However, because renovation would cost significantly more than construction of a similar new building, the authority decided to demolish it, as per HUD rules on use of funds for renovations, said authority Executive Director Gary Pelucacci.

The demolition, which is expected to begin Sept. 15, is part of ongoing capital projects at Valley View Terrace, where two other buildings, 1 and 2, are under renovation, he said. Those renovations began recently and should be done by around February or March, he said.

“Building 20 is probably in the worst condition of all of them,” Mr. Pelucacci said. “It just became too much of a financial burden” to keep.

Franklin Winstead, 25, who has lived in the three-story building next to Building 20 for the past five years, said of the demolition plan, “I think it’s a great idea. Hopefully it will create more open space and a playground for children.”

The city and authority will formally apply later this month to HUD for release of funds for the demolition. An environmental review of the demolition plan states, “The project is necessitated by the building’s obsolescence and high cost of bringing it up to modern building codes,” and the authority instead will spend its limited resources on fixing other buildings at Valley View Terrace.

Mostly vacant, Building 20 has seven of 24 units occupied, and those seven affected residents will be relocated within the complex, the application states. As of December, 184 of the total 240 units at Valley View were occupied. Razing of Building 20 also will lessen the complex’s density. After demolition, the footprint will remain open space.

The authority serves 2,500 residents living in 1,295 dwelling units at 10 sites in the city.

Valley View Terrace is the agency’s oldest public housing complex. Its groundbreaking was April 7, 1941, but the project soon was interrupted by World War II. After the war, construction later resumed, and the first tenants moved in on Dec. 2, 1951.

Valley View Terrace was followed in 1955 by the nearby 250-unit Hilltop Manor housing complex, and in 1962 by the 150-unit Bangor Heights site in North Scranton.

Contact the writer:

jlockwood@timesshamrock.com, @jlockwoodTT on Twitter

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